


Breaking Things

by FortinbrasFTW



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Sexual Content, cody reflecting on the hot mess of his life and the hotter mess of his general, forever wars are rough y'all, mentions of injuries / blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-19 02:48:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29619444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FortinbrasFTW/pseuds/FortinbrasFTW
Summary: Sometimes Cody wondered if they made his hands to hold together breaking things.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 10
Kudos: 105





	Breaking Things

Sometimes Cody wondered if they made his hands to hold together breaking things.

He didn't think about it often. It was easier to let the ever present tumult of triaging a war drown out that kind of thinking. Hold the line, assess the damage, check the report, lift the bodies. But there were moments, moments caught in the stillness that could only come in the eye of so much chaos. In those moments he felt like he was drowning in fractures. Cracks snaked through every scene that made up his strange, small, life, and no matter how many they patched up, or tamped down, or pulled together, he'd turn around and there were only more, and more, and more. An ever expanding web of fault lines, teetering on the edge of some exhausted welcome collapse, like a strained rope, like a held sigh.

It didn't make sense. They'd all come from that Bounty Hunter, hadn't they? He knew about it only vaguely. It was hard to pull myths from rumors around the barracks and mess halls and bunks. But if that was true, it truly made no sense. Bounty Hunters were the sort of people who were made to pull things apart. And here he was, always doing his unwieldy best to do just the opposite.

There were times it felt exhausting, but more often than not it just made him pissed off. If they made him to hold up falling walls, they should have made him stronger, or smarter, or harder. They should have made him better. But they didn't, and at the end of the day - at the end of many long, long days - he wasn't the sort to hang onto regrets.

He had what he had, and if that was all he was going to get, he would damn well make it enough. No, he couldn't stop a galaxy from shattering all on his own. He couldn't clutch supply lines, and political egos, and the sluggish brute of history all together in his hands, holding strong until they stuck together right. But there were some things he could do, and he was sure, more and more each day, that the small things were more important than the big ones ever could be.

The room smelled like it always did, like that grassy tea the General drank when he didn't need the harder stimulant of Kaff after not sleeping for days. The same small red lights blinked on the edge of the switched off map table. Waiting. Cody's elbow knocked a discarded pauldron off the bed as he slid his hand into brown hair. It made a dull thunk where it landed on the bare floor. The General's breath caught quick and close in the darkened space between them. It still made Cody's heart thud in his chest, harder than a fight, harder than scrambling back from death by the edge of your fingers. It still felt... impossible. Still, even after months, years. It should be impossible to hold something so bright between his fingers.

He never saw him breath like this anywhere else; fluttering and thoughtless, like a bird in an open field. The first time he'd been too lost to notice. Caught against a wall in some half obliterated mountain town that smelled like gunpowder and snow and clay. The sound of troops laughing by a fire in the distance, the light of four moons cutting indifferent between shaken buildings... It was fast, and so impossible it fit into his mind, like trying to clutch the edges of a dream on waking.

The second time he'd been able to feel afraid.

An empty medbay, the door hastily locked, bandages still tight around one of Cody's shoulders. Things were slower, but still, huffs of breath flitted and urged into the space between them. It had scared him. Even when the General was hurt he was always a picture of control. Cody would glimpse him, between the crimson slashes of blaster fire and the fog of disintegrating soil. There was a haunting calm that draped over every movement he made, giving the battle a preordained hum that made it that much more jarring when a blaster caught the grace of those movements, shocking everything out of pace. He'd lifted the General off the front dozens of times when the jedi let his impossible will finally sag. He'd allow his weight to settle into Cody with a trust that Cody felt even heavier in his throat than the man's body slung over his shoulder. There was blood soaking through the side of his robes that Cody fumbled to press tightly, cueing a wince and a half lost chuckle as the General's eyes slipped shut without his permission. Even then, his breathing was a steady solid pulse against Cody's open sticky palm.

So it had frightened him, feeling the General's pulse race under his hand, feeling his breath quicken at his jaw. Cody had pulled back enough to blink down, concern bleeding through the weight of just _needing_. But Obi Wan just kissed him hard, sharp as the dare he often held in the corner of his mouth while gazing over strategies. He'd held Cody's wrist, firm but gentle, letting his thumb drift down to indent at the base of Cody's palm in a way that licked up his arm like lightning. Cody anchored his hips as close as he possibly could between Obi Wan's clever strong legs, and his general arched his back, sighing around a smile in a way that sunk as deep as shrapnel between Cody's ribs. He knew then, knew that no matter how long or deep he dug he'd never be able to pry that smile free, that he'd orbit it like a sun for as long as he was lucky to be alive.

It didn't scare him anymore, at least not in the same way it used to. He held the General's bearded jaw easily in one hand as he worked his other between their hips; smooth but rough, slow but unrelenting. He let himself stare as Obi Wan stumbled between blinking through his pleasure and blue eyes clinging defiantly to Cody's brown ones. Cody had come to realize by now that sometimes being held together looked a lot like falling apart.

So he made himself a wall between the man in his arms and the rest of the world. He grounded his grasping hands, holding them firm over his General's head. He coaxed free lost smiles, half laughs, shocked breaths, and if Cody hoarded them all, kept each one stashed in a shadowed treasured place within his mind, well, that was no one's business but his. He knew he didn't deserve any of it. He wasn't made to keep things. None of them were. Some days he didn't know why in the hells he really had been made at all. But then Obi Wan would catch Cody’s name on his tongue, voice roughened on the edges but all silk underneath, that voice that made anything sound more beautiful than it had any right to be and Cody swelled so full of purpose it felt like it might break his ribs.

Obi Wan held him in the dull light of the blinking map table, the just there smell of tea mingling with the atmo control in the air, the humming of the hyperdrive purring through everything. He held him like he was real. He held him like he didn't know much else that was. And that was fine by Cody, more than fine. He eased into his body like it was the only place he was supposed to be, and snatched his hurried breath from the clever corners of his mouth, and when Obi Wan turned his face against the inside of Cody's wrist where it pinned his hand by his head, when he shuddered and "please, _please_ " stumbled out of him, utterly thoughtless, messy and so dangerous yet so simple, Cody knew.

This system might tear itself apart, honestly it seemed more likely with each passing day. But if it did, when it did, he'd be left standing, as long as he was able, holding together the fissures that ran through this man who never, ever deserved them.


End file.
